On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 01:00:48PM +0000, Mark Carter wrote: > or hledger to compile on OS X. I haven't compiled ledger on Ubuntu, > either; it seems to get stuck on boost_filessystem, or something. I > think I managed to get ledger to compile once, but that was in the > past.
I'd check if ledger is in the latest Ubuntu release yet. It got added to Debian a while ago; worst case, you should only have to grab the Debian source package and rebuild it on your Ubuntu system. Mac OS/X, on the other hand, I have no idea about. OSes without decent package management are always a pain to work with... <grin> > My thought on ledger is that "there's too much code", and relies on > some external packages like boost, making it a pain to set up. <fx: hysterical laughter> I'm sorry, but have you ever tried to build GNUcash from source? Now *there's* something that relies on an excess of external code. Ledger, whilst it does use some slightly "cutting edge" libraries, really is at the straightforward end of the building spectrum. > In the > past, I had expressed an interest in producing an NPV calculator for > ledger via a shell script. The problem is, ledger's output isn't in a > form that makes this convenient. I can't help but thinking that within > ledger, there's a much simpler idea waiting to get out. If there's something simpler than ledger (whilst still being as functional and expressive) struggling to get out, I'd love to see it -- and I'm confident that John can find it in there. > This has led me to seriously start reconsidering putting some polish > on my own accounting package to be much more robust and generic. The > kind of thing I had in mind to produce is an accounting package as a > python library, input via a single stream, and a mechanism for > extensible syntax. There's a way to go before it's up to snuff, > though. There's nothing that says that ledger is the be-all and end-all of command-line accounting. Go forth and experiment! I'd pick a system interface at a very different level to a python library, but that's primarily because I'd rather try to build ledger on OS9 than write Python ever again. I'm unlikely to be your target audience, though, because I'm *quite* happy with ledger as it exists at the moment. - Matt
